ose that come in for pleasure, strangers of Kent, and those that
have a distant birthright in East Sussex, being born beyond Ouse in the
Rape of Bramber.

But it is not this Rother that I am telling of, though I would love to
tell of it also--as indeed I would love to tell at length of all the
rivers of Sussex--the Brede, the Ouse, the Adur, the Cuckmere; all the
streams that cut the chalk hills. But for this I have no space and you
no patience. Neither can I tell you of a thousand adventures and
wonderful hazards along the hills and valley of this eastern Rother; of
how I once through a telescope on Brightling Hill saw the meet at
Battle, and of how it looked quite near; of how I leapt the River Rother
once, landing on the far side safely (which argues the river narrow or
the leap tremendous); of how I poached in the wood of a friend who is
still my friend; of how I rode a horse into Robertsbridge; of the inn.
All these things could I tell with growing fervour, and to all these
would you listen with an increasing delight. But I must write of the
River Rother under Petworth, the other Rother in the West. Why? Because
I started out so to do, and no man should let himself be led away by a
word, or by any such little thing.

Let me therefore have done with this eastern river, far away from my
home, a river at the end of long journeys, and speak of that other noble
Rother, the Rother of quiet men, the valley that is like a shrine in
England.

Many famous towns and villages stand in the valley of this river and
even (some of them) upon its very banks. Thus there are the three
principal towns of this part, Midhurst and Petworth and Pulborough: but
these have been dealt with and written of in so many great books and by
such a swarm of new men that I have no business further to describe
their merits and antiquity. But this I will add to all that is known of
them. Midhurst takes its name from standing in the middle, for it is
half-way between the open downs and the thick woods on the borders of
Surrey. Petworth has a steeple that slopes to one side; not so much as
Chesterfield, but somewhat more than most steeples. Pulborough stands
upon a hill, and is famous for its corn-market, to which people come
from far and near, from as far off as Burpham or as close by as Bury.
All these noble towns have (as I said before) been written of in books,
only no book that I know puts them all together and calls them "the
Valley of the Rothe